How Gifted Kids Learn to Read

One of my doctoral studies’ advisors specialized in how people learn to read. I paid little attention to that research at the time, and by the early 1990’s, my own understanding was still mostly anecdotal or from my own experiences. I had some personal family stories, taught school in a very intellectually diverse community, seen differences between generations and when they started to read, and watched my own three children’s learning paths.

When I was a little girl in the 1950’s, my mother read Dr. Spock’s baby book and anything else she could get her hands on to make sure she was doing all the “right things.” Parents were told not to push their children. This meant that many in my generation were not encouraged to read before starting school. “Don’t interfere with what the trained educators will teach your children,” our parents were told. So, I started school not knowing how to read, although I certainly knew how to sight read many signs, logos, record labels and book titles because I’d memorized their associations, e.g. we stop at the “stop” sign. When I started school, my mother was alarmed that I wasn’t learning to read. She made flash cards and taught me phonics. I remember the hardest word in the stack of flashcards for me was “baby.” How do you phonetically sound out “baby”? I kept saying “baa-bye,” which rhymes with rabbi. My mother was a yeller. This was not a good experience.

Then one day when I was about 7 years old, I simply started to read. The first book I read was Lassie Come Home by Erik Knight. One day I couldn’t read … and the next day I could literally read and understand anything. I see this with my client children all the time except that it usually happens when they are younger than I was. My own children’s father grew up a 1,000 miles away from me, but he experienced much the same reading delay as I had. He got very ill when he was in second grade—still not a reader—and the school sent a tutor to his home to work with him while he was recuperating. Same thing happened; he went from not reading to reading anything – in one day. What happened?

My mother, on the other hand, born in 1927, came from a generation that got to do what they were ready to do whenever that time arose. Grade skipping was common. If a child was ahead of age-mates, she got moved up a grade level or two to learn with older students. My mother was the fourth child in her family. One summer morning when she was four years old, she walked to the public library and wanted to take some books home. The librarian told her she needed a library card. “How do you get a library card?” she asked. “You have to know how to read,” came the answer. Mom ran home, confronted an older brother, and told him she needed to learn to read “right now!” She went back for her library card—and some books to bring home—that afternoon.

I currently tell parent clients that gifted kids learn to read after they develop their vocabularies and learn to know what should come next in a sentence. The brighter the children, the earlier they start absorbing verbal—language—information from their surroundings. Phonics is a useful tool later, but teaching smart children to read with phonics is very confusing to most of them and sometimes slows them down. Phonics works to teach “decoding” skills, but a child who knows how to decode still may not understand what he reads. Most really bright children appear to start reading almost spontaneously. Most parents of such children report that they aren’t sure how their children learned to read.

Bright kids learn to read when they are exposed to how the printed word gives information or tells a story. There are studies showing that the parents of poor children use fewer words with their children, read to them less, and have fewer books in their homes than do typical parents from higher socioeconomic statusgroups and even some specific racial and ethnic groups. But the big question is this: is it equally effective for all children—regardless of the intellectual abilities and overall interests that the children individually possess— for parents, teachers, and other adults to talk and read to them more? Our public school policy is largely driven by the assumption that all children learn to read the same way and with the same tools and approach. Will providing the same level of vocabulary, conversation, books in the home, and parents who read to them turn the vast majority of American children into capable, high-level readers? Right now the adult literacy rate in the United States is only about 86%. But even that number is misleading because regular reading for information or pleasure is done by only a very small percentage of our population.

It is precisely these questions that makes typical public school classes so problematic for so many gifted children and their parents. For example, research by McCoach & Reis at the University of Connecticut shows that gifted children learn more over the summer than during the school year. Although some interpret this as proof bright children come from stimulating rather than impoverished homes, I propose it is more often due to these smart children finally being freed to read and learn what they are ready to learn—at their own pace and in their own time. The No Child Left Behind school day is set for the majority of learners, not the brightest ones who are still required to be there with others their age who learn much differently and more slowly.

Studies consistently show that the brighter the child, the earlier in their lives they start to absorb vocabulary, normal sentence structure, and the nuances of language in general. When Sesame Street first aired, the goal was to give children in poverty the same early start as their higher socioeconomic counterparts. This is one reason I ask new clients when it was that their children started to pay attention to television, movies, and videos. How early in their lives did they begin to absorb language and verbal skills from their environment? The Sesame Street study uncovered the fact that there appears to be a difference not in how much parents from different socioeconomic groups use TV as a babysitter, but in what the preferred TV programs were for children from each group. Brighter children have an earlier ability to attend—pay attention to—educational programming than do less intelligent children regardless of whether they live in poverty or affluence. Gifted children start learning sooner than other children. They start school “better prepared” because their intellectual profile allows them to absorb sooner and more intensely from whatever environment they are in. Please note that the excellent article linked here—like most educational policy examinations—does not adequately address how intellectual level and profile affects readiness.

Because most children have no options except to attend public schools, it is imperative that those schools instruct all children appropriately–taking their abilities and readiness into account–if they are to learn. It is not true that “by third grade (or fourth grade) we can’t even tell who the early readers were.” It is an unacceptable excuse for keeping all children of the same age in the same classes for instruction. I’ll talk about the topic of gifted children and reading much more in future blogs.

10 Responses to “How Gifted Kids Learn to Read”

My eldest, Klaus, didn’t start reading until he was almost six, but only because he hadn’t tried. He “didn’t think he was supposed to read” until kindergarten. Then a preschool classmate brought her favorite book to read to their class. That night he came home and read “Morris the Moose” to me. The next day picture books were too easy and he was on to Amelia Bedelia.

The fact that he never tried still puzzles me. I started reading at two and never slowed down. My mom still teases me about reading junk mail and cereal boxes. But it’s an instinct. I literally cannot not-read something.

[…] the Educational Options’ blog, Deborah Ruf had a fascinating post about How Gifted Kids Learn to Read. She points to studies and raises some interesting questions. She also adds some new information, […]

Love this post! My mother is a 4th grade reading teacher, but that wasn’t until I finished college.

She taught me how to read just by reading to me. I was reading well by kindergarten. No phonics no coaching…just read.

My oldest who is 7 was reading before K and keeps making jumps.

My youngest, almost 6, is the most fascinating. She is a visual spatial learner and resists phonics with a passion. I have to teach her words through pictures and movement. This is challenging because, as we know, this is not how they teach in the public school. So, we must do the learning when she comes home. I wonder when and how she will make the transition from working so artistically at learning words to just reading them somehow. I love reading about this topic!

I found educationaloptions.wordpress.com very informative. The article is professionally written and I feel like the author knows the subject very well. educationaloptions.wordpress.com keep it that way.

I agree – learning to read can be such an easy task for some students and they can make that jump in almost no time. Making the change from picture books to Amelia Bedelia is especially exciting! Students of every ability make the same transition, just at different points. One of the most rewarding things about teaching reading is that “aha” moment when all the pieces fall into place.

The author of the comment, Sound Reading, wrote a lovely and complimentary post about my Reading Blog. Thank you. But, it is very important to point out that there are some intellectual levels among children and adults that preclude their ever having “all the pieces fall into place.” If you are certain that the child or adult in question (who hasn’t caught on to reading yet) is of at least average intelligence, it will happen; the child can learn to read and it simply is likely to take longer than a child of higher intelligence. So, more on reading later.

Our older son started sight-reading at 16 months-only about 20 of the most familiar words-and was reading with comprehension by around 30 months. And nope, we don’t know “how” he did it. (It’s nice to hear from your blog that this is “normal” for parents of gifted kids!) He just finished kindergarten and is starting first grade, and since K started I’ve noticed what seems to be a decrease in his reading skills. I think what’s happened is he’s trying to apply the rudimentary phonics he was taught last year, and it’s resulting in a temporary slump in his reading skills. (“Let’s eat at that Bye-stro.” -bistro? -yeah.) I wonder if other gifted kids have this issue of a perceived decrease in comprehension/decoding ability as they start a traditional curriculum? My hope is that it will correct itself as he learns more phonics rules and exceptions, and it will help him become a better speller in the long run, but I wonder if his phonics education is actually a deterrent?

My now six year old daughter started sounding out simple words (as well as typing them) at 3.5, but then stopped and resisted any reading whatsoever until this year. She’s a sight word reader and has resisted any phonics instruction, to the point of purposfully manipulating DRA tests with reading teachers in her school. She failed a level six mid year, but finally cooperated with her teacher the last month of school and easily passed a level 18. The school is worried because during some acheivement and IQ testing (done at their request) she couldn’t sound out multisylabic words. They tell me that they won’t progress her in a reading group until she can demonstrate that she knows how! The best we can figure is she’s somewhere at a second grade reading level and this is without any formal instruction and shouting ‘I HATE TO READ’ as loudly as she could whenever she was taken aside during the year.
We are becomming a bit concerned with how first grade will go, even though the school now has ‘proof’ of her giftedness.